Britain By Bike, Jane Eastoe (2010) Batsford 9781906388713 Octo 217pp £16.99 A 'celeb'-endorsed, tv-advertised, nostalgia-infused guide whose main appeal is a gift purchase - and, a note about the tv series on which it is based at the end of this review

What a curious beast is nostalgia. Give me a box cycling magazines from before I was born, a couple of old CTC handbooks and a BLRC race programme, and I can wallow for hours. The smell of the paper, the odd ads for long-forgotten British components, even the modest addresses of the club consuls give me the giddy feeling that I can almost reach out and touch the past.

Take the same material, extract the highlights and spin them up into a lavish new tome, and whatever magic I previously imagined to be there, is quite, quite gone. Indeed, for anyone who worries that they are more attracted to nostalgia than is healthy, the reproduction of such material is a dependable cure.

So, if you have watched British Transport's Cyclists' Special film more than twice, or you have been tempted by runs of Cycling, or the CTC Gazette, from decades past, then help might be at hand.

In the next few weeks, BBC 4 will start screening 'Britain By Bike' in which erstwhile jockey and now BBC sports presenter Clare Balding 'embarks on a pedal-powered odyssey around the UK, rediscovering the magical world of Fifties-style cycling'. She will 'follow in the tracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe, whose guidebooks, The Cycling Touring Guides, helped open up the British countryside to post-war cyclists.'

It would be churlish to complain about the Corporation taking an interest in cycling, and the series may yet win over sceptics. If the book, produced to accompany the programmes is anything to go by, however, this is unlikely.

It is a handsome volume, got up to look like and feel like a collection of ripping yarns from the 1950s. The binding is generous and the paper, a thick, chalky stock that comes close to products of the age it seeks to evoke. The first fifty pages are devoted to general cycling advice.

Thereafter the volume divides into sections on the regions and nations of Great Britain.

Illustration, much of it in colour, is lavish - there is scarcely a spread without a period photograph or illustration. Other pages are illuminated with nice maps, and an awful lot of photographs of Clare Balding - either awheel, or admiring views, bike at her side.

Each area is given a general introduction, from which we obtain such pearls as: it is 'the swerving ups and downs that make (the Yorkshire Dales) such a charming landscape'. Predictably, however, the scope of this guide is slight - not to say facile. It would be better described as a pot porri than a guide. The 250 or so words devoted to Lancashire, for example, do no justice to one of England's best cycling counties, nor would most who have actually cycled in Cambridge describe it, as this book does, as 'a cyclist's paradise'.

The area overviews are interspersed with short magazine-style articles - Blenheim Palace, the Clarion cycle clubs and AE Houseman's landscapes, among them. A number of fairly undemanding cycle routes are also described. There are some perfectly good, shortish leisure rides included, although, to pick one, the only ride described in Suffolk, is a circumnavigation of Alton Water. It might be a fine nine mile ride with children, but a turn around a flooded gravel pit is far from the best of the county.

In general, it is a highly professional product, although it never shakes off the impression that much of the research leant heavily on Wikipedia.

Anything that ignites enthusiasm for cycle touring is to be applauded, and this might just be the prompt for some to take their bikes further afield. At heart, however, it is a confection that fails to transcend being a celebrity-fronted tv spin-off.

TD Apr 10

On the basis of the tv programe's first outing, the broadcasts are significantly better than the book. The format is essentially that of the 'Coast' series - snippets of cycle travel, interspersed with three or four minute features on local sights and stories. I don't particularly warm to Balding's boarding-school-head-girl persona, and the scenes of her cycling have more than a whif of artifice about them. Taken as a whole, however, the package is sufficiently enjoyable to make me want to watch the rest of the series - and it certainly paints cycle touring as the inexpensive, enjoyable and worthwhile pursuit that I have always enjoyed.

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